“Do you find that’s what it usually is with women?”
“Oh yes.”
He moved daintily towards them. He was quite short and his long-lasting pints of beer hadn’t put any flesh on his thin bones. He wore a dark grey suit which shone here and there from too much ironing, and a broad sixties flowered tie in a neat Windsor knot under a frayed collar. But though the clothes had seen better days, everything was spotlessly clean.
Ted made the introductions and set a full pint in Les’s hand. Carole waited for a grateful mouthful to be downed before asking, “So you actually know Nathan Locke?”
The old man looked disappointed. “Oh, so you mean it wasn’t my body you were after?”
“Just a few questions first, then we’ll get on to the sex. What do you fancy – a threesome with the two of us?”
Carole was appalled by the suggestion, but once again was forced to admire Jude’s uncanny skill of hitting the right note with people. That kind of outrageous badinage was the response Les Constantine wanted; she had instantly tuned in to his wavelength.
“All right,” he wheezed. “We’ll sort out the fine-tuning later…you know, “Your place or mine?” How’s that?”
“Sounds perfect.”
“Sounds perfect to me too, Jude.” He relished the taste of her name on his lips. “So what can I do you for? Presumably you’re interested in the boy because of what happened down the hairdresser’s?”
“Well, yes.”
“You and everyone else in Fethering. Yes, suddenly – just thanks to a geographical accident, living down the road from the boy – I’m very popular.” He took another swig of beer. “Not the first free pint I’ve got this evening for my…inside knowledge, is it, Ted?”
The landlord guffawed agreement, and for a moment Carole wondered whether they had been seduced into a handy little scam between publican and customer. Then, with a wink, Ted Crisp wandered off to collect up glasses from the slowly emptying tables.
“I live in Marine Villas,” Les went on. “You know where I mean?”
“Parallel to Beach Road, running down to the Fether.”
“That’s it. I been there nearly forty years now. With the wife Iris I was, till she passed away…1999 that was.” The recollection still caused him a pang. “Anyway, the Lockes moved in about a year after that. Nathan was, I don’t know, ten, maybe younger. Nice kid, not one of these that’s always causing trouble and nicking your dustbins and throwing McDonald wrappers in your front garden and that. More interested in books and schoolwork, I gather. Whole family’s a bit arty-farty, from what I hear.”
“So do you actually know Nathan?”
“Just to say hello to. Not bosom pals, but in a street like Marine Villas…well, you hear a bit about everyone’s business. Like, I suppose, most of them know about everything I get up to…that is, except for the Torture Chamber in the cellar and the Dominatrix, obviously.”
“Oh, I’d heard rumours about her,” said Jude, again finding exactly the right level.
“Blimey O’Reilly! You can’t keep anything secret in a place like this, can you?” He shook his head at the prurience of Fethering residents.
“Anyway,” Carole pressed on, “do you know anything about Nathan Locke’s relationship with Kyra Bartos?”
“She’s the dead girl, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
This time the headshake was more measured and regretful. “Heartbreaking, isn’t it? Kid like that. Got everything ahead of her…you know, could have been a mum, had lots of kiddies…and this, it kind of all stops it, doesn’t it? I saw that photo of her they had on the telly…just a little girl. Reminded me a bit of my Iris when I first met her…We used to do our courting in Brighton…nice dance hall there was there then…” With a more resolute shake of his head, he jolted himself out of maudlin reminiscence. “Anyway, what was the question? Did I know anything about Nathan’s ‘relationship’ with the dead girl? Not really. Just heard along the old Marine Villas bush telegraph that he’d got this girlfriend who worked up the hairdresser’s…General feeling was that it was good news, because he’d always had a reputation of being a bit bookish, you know, coming from an arty-farty family, apparently hoping to go to university and that…and I think everyone thought he deserved a bit of fun, like. ‘All work and no play’…you know what they say.”
“Do you know what he’s hoping to read at university?” asked Carole.
“Read? I’ve no idea. I told you I didn’t know him that well, so I don’t know what books he reads.”
“Carole meant: what does he want to study at university?” Jude explained.
“Ah. Right. I don’t know…language or something like that. Not anything useful.”
“What do you mean by ‘useful’?”
“Well, it’s not something that might’ve, like, taught him a trade. Just all to do with books. That’s all any of them seem to learn these days. I mean, when I was young, boys of that age done an apprenticeship. You know, learned something that might be useful in later life.”
“Is that what you did?” asked Jude gently.
“Too right. Couldn’t wait to get out of school. My dad worked in boat-building…pleasure boats, yachts, you know. Got me an apprenticeship at the yard where he worked in Littlehampton, Collier & Brompton. I loved the work. My dad thought it’d last for ever.”
“You imply that it didn’t?”
“No, but at least my old man never knew that. When he passed away, I was…what, early twenties? Just met Iris, we was courting, but me old dad never saw us married. Never saw what happened to the leisure boatbuilding industry either.”
“What did happen?”
“Fibreglass, that’s what happened. Started in the fifties, then more and more in the sixties. And suddenly the skills I had…you know, woodworking skills, suddenly there’s not so much demand from them down the boatyards. Oh, a few keep going with the old methods, some adapt. Collier & Brompton, yard I worked in, they did. They ask me if I want to retrain, but putting fibreglass in moulds, that wasn’t my idea of boat-building. And I was in my forties by then…old dogs and new tricks, you know. So I give up the boats.”
“And haven’t you worked since?”
“Oh, blimey, yes. Got a job putting in fitted kitchens. Bit overqualified I reckoned I was – a trained shipwright trimming edges off MDF shelf units, but…well, can’t be too choosy when you haven’t got no income. Did that till I was sixty-five, but by then the old hands were getting a bit shaky and I wasn’t finding it so easy to lug all them units around, so…heigh-ho for a happy retirement. Which it was…till…” He didn’t need to complete the sentence.
Carole broke the ensuing, silence. “So you can’t tell us any more about Nathan Locke…?”
“Well, no. Except that everyone in Fethering reckons he topped that poor kid.”
“And have they any reason for saying that?” asked Jude.
“He was definitely due to meet up with her the evening before she was found dead.”
“Do you know where they were due to meet?”
“Certainly not her place, I’ll tell you that for free. Apparently her old man didn’t approve of Nathan…or any other young man who come sniffing round his daughter. No, the Fethering view is that, since Kyra had got the keys to the salon – you know, because she was due to open up the next morning – she entertained her boyfriend there.”
“Ah.” Carole nodded. The theory fitted in with the empty bottles she had seen in the back room of Connie’s Clip Joint. And perhaps the red roses. “Well, presumably, as we speak, the police are questioning Nathan Locke about just that.”
“I’m sure they would be,” said the old man, “but they can’t.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because nothing has been seen of the boy since he left his home in Marine Villas’at seven o’clock that evening.”
“Oh.”
